Learning for a Purpose

What does this picture have to do with the title?

Wow!! I can't believe I started this post and then got so busy that I totally forgot to finish it.

Look at the above picture. It looks like a wire with a farm in the background, right? Well, it is. It's also something else. There is learning going on here. Self-directed learning at that. I can give anyone a camera and tell them to take pictures. When I get them back some will be good and some will be OK, but probably very few will be great.

However, give them a purpose and you will get results. This is what I did in this case. I worked with a group of students on digital photography with the knowledge that each one of them would be entered in a wonderful photography contest. The River Valley Photography Contest is a great place for students to showcase their work and get recognized.

In this case, it wasn't a case of 'I'll take the best two or three shots'; they knew that each one of them would have an entry in the contest. With that in mind, I gave them the contest "themes" and they were off.

Sure, I got blurry photos, off-theme photos, crazy pictures, funny pictures, but I also got excellent photos and a group of grade 6 and 7 students who were engaged and could tell you a story about each picture.

The photos are now entered in the contest. They were engaged in their learning, and I believe that they will remember this one activity for a long time. So much fun!